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Holy Shit!! This link is for the book in its entirety! Thanks DrewH. What's the difference between it and my copy of "Awaken Healing Light of the Tao"? You will initiate an avalanche of reading suggestions. Westerners who aren't typically familiar with non-duality may lose a little in the translations of ancient Chinese texts. I got a lot out of "Awaken Healing Energy..." He delves deeply enough into basic anatomy to make it comprehensible. Taoism synthesizes virtually every discipline, every academic subject, into a comprehensive theory of life. I'd recommend Deng Ming-Dao's "Scholar/Warrior," and I own every one of his books except for his latest. I'm looking forward to seeing what others have to suggest. Curiosity and a thirst for learning is a sign of an adventurous spirit. Oh yeah... "The Book of Chinese Health and Healing" by Daniel Reid is a must read too, and has an academic quality that is pleasing to those turned off by the New Agey vibe.

Please, everyone, I beg of you. Just believe everything I say. My inner child needs this. Please comply. Yeah, well, falsehood rarely presents itself without at least a trace of truth. But children's books are for children.

Thanks for clarifying. Seems that teacher/student relations are paramount.

My first reaction was "Who the hell is Paula Hartz?" It took me less than 60 seconds to discover that she writes books on world religions... for children. BFD!!

Then your post bounced of MY forehead. Sorry. It sounded like you were impugning ES's point at first.

Yes. I used the Buddhist Palm.

I think I'll quote Dr. Yang's "Qigong for Health and Martial Arts" as well when I get the chance. Chapter 2 is called Wai Dan Qigong (external Elixir) and Chapter 3 is called Nei dan Qigong (internal elixir), which I take to be Chi Kung and Nei Kung, respectively. The similarities with Frantzis' grasp of the subject appear to be greater than the divergences. It would be great to create a flow chart, or schematic, of all these teachings in one continuum, but I suspect there would be honest disconnects in pedagogy. I may end up getting a copy of "Chi Kung for Dummies"; the series often have good writers. Thanks for the points.

I believe Eternal Student's point was very precise about the perils of conditionality and it completely bounced off your forehead. Try a second reading.

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You are right, this thread did help to clarify an important subject. I am feeling compelled to conclude that it is the nature of anonymous, impersonal, non-fact to face, online communication that contributes to dreadful bouts of miscommunication, ill will, confusion, and spite. Since most of my life has been spent without the internet, I should just accept this reality and move on. But I do miss the days of clear thinking and the joy to be had in the life of the mind and ideas.

Bruce's work seems a fairly straightforward and demystified resource for opening up channels. I've been doing Little Orbit Med. for several weeks now and the energy is spilling out all over the place. I've really opened up the channel from the tongue down to the LDT. Jwing Ming says lying down on your back is a great way to start opening the legs. I'm getting some good movement sensation, but I don't yet feel it coursing from the perineum; rather, it just pulses across the greater trochanter. I can make my big toes throb voluntarily but there are still gaps in the circuit. I'd love to know if anyone else incorporated Bruce's work with more traditional practice. Risks? Rewards? It's so easy to make a soup out of the teachings. Thanks in advance.

The foot shaoyang goes through the fourth toe according to acupuncture meridians, correct? Which meridian did it "bounce" back up? I've relied a great deal on anatomy for guiding my internal movement. Incidently, Bruce does say the outside of the foot responds most readily to gentle palpation. Thanks for sharing this.

This thread causes suffering. Please kill it.

Nei Kung is where it's at. www.neikungla.com www.chutaichi.com Have you embraced your horse today?

What if...? Then I would say you have remarkable consistency with the Buddha, modern psychology, the postmodern realization, systems theory, ecology, Stephen Batchelor, David Loy, Fritjof Capra, Timothy Ferris, Carl Sagan and Albert Einstein. I would say that you are in good company, while most people here would think you are a freak or a heretic. You can sit at my table any time.

Making sweeping and perjorative generalizations about those who practice a particular path is on the same intellectual level as racism and sexism and other forms of discrimination, the stupid smileyfaces notwithstanding. I'm not saying the gravity of the hatred and stupidity is the same, but the thought process certainly is.

This was the same tale that Buddhist scholar Stephen Batchelor (Buddhism without Beliefs) shared with us Tuesday night in Los Angeles. The Buddha excoriated this practice of using metaphysical abstractions to rationalize the failure of decisiveness in the midst of suffering. Batchelor elaborated on the contemporary prevalence of this indulgent behavior and made a forceful argument that superficial differences in spiritual paths are irrelevant to the task of sacking up and helping those who suffer. After examining this thread that I have posted, and others like it, I have to conclude that it is the nature of online, anonymous posting that sucks the wisdom to its lowest common denominator. The intellectual level of our discourse would be much greater in a classroom, face to face, than the haphazard spraying of (mis)information that occurs in here. And yet, I continue to participate, and I'm not sure why.

I'm with you here. This was once brought home to me by a professor lecturing on postmodernism who said "The only way to rightfully discuss the nature of God was in the presence of a dying child." Affluent western countries give their citizens a wide berth when it comes to masturbating about spiritual ideals. Nevertheless, I am trying to keep my ego in check in this forum, and I frequently fail. Typing with compassion and "right speech" (part of the Buddhist 8-fold path) is something I frequently give myself permission to ignore, which means that I am not as good a communicator as I would like to be. I am frequently moved to hysterical anger and contempt with the stupidity, thoughtlessness, metaphysical indulgence and general lack of intellectual humility that is often expressed, and I should recognize this "trigger" for what it is and use it to diffuse my own anger. I've paid a high price for my own egotism, particularly when it comes to the world of ideas. Most of my life has been lived before the internet, so I have to evaluate how I am going to deal with the dark side of debate. In the mean time, I wish everyone peace and harmony, and encourage people to pull their beloved heads out of their asses and get a library card.

Thank you much for posting this. We don't have tv but I'm going to have someone record this. I think this deserves a more descriptive subject heading, no?

I am right there with you, Zen. I would admonish all of us who feel so moved that we are not morally responsible for our feelings, only our actions. Some philosophers have argued that we are also morally responsible for our ideas, and the information we gather to construct our ideas, which is a different subject altogether, but I've spend hours devising punishments for animal abusers. It just shows us the depths of our feeling. May your journey be a gentle one.

There's nothing more enjoyable than imagining oneself as the first human being ever to ponder original thoughts about the universe. A toast to reinventing the spiritual wheel! All who've come before us, keep silent!!

We are evolving along, aren't we? Communicating by merely posting links to other sources of information. Kewl!! My two cents on hallucinogens - they are way too much fun, but that's another story. As Huston Smith and Terrence Mckenna have written about extensively, halls. and mushrooms did, in my personal experience, consistently, dissolve the psychological barriers between self and non-self, and I mean "small s" when I mean self (since it doesn't exist anyway, and that's yet another story). In the absence of said barriers, one's awareness becomes sensitive to the ecological reality of interdependency and connectedness to the rest of creation. This was always a profoundly moving and spiritually intoxicating experience for me, and for thousands of others who have taken these compounds. That being said, once is really enough, as Huston Smith also said, to trigger the desire to replicate this exquisite awareness of this connectedness through spiritual exercises. Of course, as a young adult, I used these compounds more than once... ...way more than once